Swiss bleue-a liquor from the Val-de- Travers still known as a clandestine, even though it is no longer illegal- which tasted like a mountain breeze after a day in car-exhaust fumes. Next, Schaf produced a small, iodine-colored vial containing a sam- ple of home-distilled American hooch. 'What these guys are doing is really il- legal," he said. It was vile, with a strong, acrid aftertaste that Schaf ascribed to home distillation over a naked flame. Then Schaf poured me a drink with a deep-green color, like a first-pressing olive oil. "Don't put water in this one," he said. The nose was almost nonexis- tent, but after drinking it I wondered for several moments if I would wretch. The bitterness of the drink was so ex- treme that it seemed to gouge a chan- nel down my tongue toward my larynx. "That," Schaf said, grinning with the satisfied air of a teacher who's proved his point, "is what you get when you " macerate. He explained that the idea that ab- sinthe should taste bitter is a miscon- ception of the modern absinthe revival. Consumers associate unpalatability with authenticity, and assume that the worse the taste, the greater the effect. When wormwood-the second most bitter substance on earth, after rue- is soaked in alcohol, or macerated, it tastes very bitter. But distillation of a wormwood macerate-the process that Dr. Ordinaire hit upon-removes the bitter notes. Schaf speculates that most modern absinthes are not distilled, and are simply the result of mixing cheap grain or beet alcohol with various es- sences and flavorings. Schafknows that he and Breaux are squeezed between the market's low ex- pectations and their own insistence on historical accuracy, and he worries that the acrid absinthes currently on the market may put people off the drink. Their business tactic has been to posi- tion their product as a gourmet drink, aimed at a niche market. Since starting production at Saumur, nearly two years ago, Breaux's company, Jade Liqueurs, has brought out three varieties of ab- sinthe: Verte Suisse 65 is an attempt to faithfully re-create an absinthe made during the nineteenth century by the Swiss company C. F. Berger; Absinthe Édouard 72 mimics the taste of the drink distilled around the same time by Édouard Pernod; Nouvelle Orlé- ans is made to Breaux's own recipe and is designed to approximate the kind of absinthe that might once have been made in his home town. The bottles have elaborate labels redolent of the Belle Époque and sell for nearly a hun- dred dollars-more if you order some of Jade's reproduction absinthe spoons and glassware. In countries where the retailing of absinthe is legal, such as England, Breaux's absinthe is stocked at upscale outlets, like Fortnum & Mason. Americans can order bottles through a couple of Internet retailers. Breaux makes only about five thousand bottles each year, not enough to satisfy demand, and says he's not interested in producing on a larger scale: "I want to make people realize that the drink is artisanal." Th " d " . h e name wormwoo notwlt- standing, and despite its wood- like texture when dried, Artemisia absinthium is not a wood but a leafy plant with delicate yellow flowers. The name comes from its supposed ver- micidal properties-a cure ("wode") for worms. John Gerard, the English herbalist, wrote in his "Herball" of 1597 that wormwood "voideth away the wormes of the guts." By the late nineteenth century, this wholesome reputation had been all but buried, and a scientific consensus emerged, according to which absinthe was the source of grievous mental and bodily harm, because of the wormwood oil it contained. Administered in suf- ficient quantities, this compound is highly toxic, a point that nineteenth- century doctors and scientists liked to demonstrate by injecting guinea pigs with concentrated essence of worm- wood and watching the animals' slow and agonizing death by convulsions. At the same time, the drink's defend- ers saw wormwood as the most proba- ble cause of absinthe's purported lofty high. Wormwood was at once a source of danger and of delight. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the focus of the scientific debate had nar- rowed around the toxin thujone, which was isolated from wormwood oil-it is about sixty per cent thujone-and identified as the cause of the harmful Þ :fc;:,; .. - ...."4-""'-. /0' .-<. -"" r:r l .-"\\ . :, I'} :\ It' l fjr_ \. '\ I {:'r.. \ " , ) /." /' r/ / 1k Before. \, \ /i / e,;' .\ I :- ,.-. , " ......, , ' '., "-, ',' "1 ( 'I,.'t f':f 'f' " I . -__ '.i :" .. _. > \ r.., ... \) .' ;:; \{!; ;, '\- ,---:;. :.'.' :1 ',;'". : ..-.-<< . 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